Mark Dion's "Survival of the Cutest (Who Gets On The Ark?)"

Photo: susanimal.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/dion-ark.jpg

The attractiveness of each animal directly relates to the amount of human concern for it.

Related: Nina Katchadourian's Continuum of Cute

Alexis Rockman

Cataclysm (2003) in Volcano


The Farm (2000) in Wonderful World


Rat Evolution (1999) in Future Evolution


Ready to Rumble (1998) in Concrete Jungle

'Vivid landscapes - full of dinosaurs, insects, birds and farm animals - are set against natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions and floods. In them, he depicts surreal, sometimes post-apocalyptic scenes that foreshadow the fate of the world if mankind doesn't better protect its delicate ecosystems.' [Images 1 & 2 and text from aceditions.com/artists/alexis-rockman. and images 3 & 4 from alexisrockman.net]

Mac James's Shark Fin Soup

Image: www.macjamesonkauai.com

Sharks at Underwater World

I just went to the Underwater World oceanarium in Singapore. It was more crowded than Disneyland. This scene shows part of the long acrylic tunnel where visitors go through.




Photographed a visitor who elected to 'Dive with the Sharks', seen here petting a baby shark. The sharks include adult leopard sharks, white tip reef sharks, and nurse sharks.



It made me think of Rob Stewart hugging a shark in his film Sharkwater. This scene is in Sharkwater part 1/9 at 3:30 min.



A sign in the acrylic tunnel relating the sharks to sharks' fin soup.



Because virtually all upscale Chinese restaurants serve shark's fin soup, I'm happy about the didactic shark exhibit in Singapore, which had earlier waged a campaign to avoid shark's fin soup (a wedding tradition as entrenched as diamond rings), and wish that the exhibit were in Hong Kong and China (as well as Rob Stewart's Sharkwater film).


Image: 'Chiu Chou Shark Fin Restaurant' in Hong Kong, 12.2010

Background
Each year almost 100 million sharks are killed to make shark's fin soup. Many times a shark is dragged onto a boat and its fins cut off, then tossed back into the ocean while it dies a slow and painful death. This practice is not only cruel but wasteful [www.sharkwater.com]. Sharks have the most mercury compared to other fishes, since they're top of the food chain and toxins (e.g. mercury from our pollution of the ocean) accumulate in their system as they eat other animals. Mercury is a neural toxin that damages the brain and nervous system.

Related:

An interesting video of swimming with tiger sharks (not the cuddly kind, unlike the reef or nurse sharks), however it's not advisable to hand-feed sharks. Similar to feeding bears, it's not good for the bears or the sharks as it changes their natural behavior. The shark opens and closes its mouth to take in water to breathe www.dailyscubadiving.com/year-2009-is-declared-year-of-sharks.

Previous post about sharks...
'No shark-fin' cards
Cities in 3D

Rebirth as animals: Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Micheangelo Frammartino

Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Loong Boonmee raleuk chat
2010, Drama, Sci-fi & Fantasy

In Buddhist thought, any human could be reborn as an animal, and any animal could be reborn as a human. Animals have always been regarded as sentient beings and have an equal potential to become enlightened. 'Watching the just-released trailer for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives it's impossible not to think of the director's brilliant Tropical Malady.' Uncle Boonmee, who knows he will die in 48 hours, calls his distant relatives to take him back from hospital to home. 'There, they are greeted by the ghost of his deceased wife who has re-appeared to take care of him. His lost son also returns from the jungle in an ape-like form. The son has mated with a creature known as a 'monkey ghost' and has lived in the trees with her for the past 15 years. ... while the ghost wife is doing his kidney dialysis, Boonmee has a sudden urge to visit a place she has mentioned. So the group takes a journey into the jungle at night. It is full of animals and spirits. They finally reach a cave on top of the hill. Boonmee realizes that this is the cave in which he was born in the first life that he can remember.' [Todd Brown at twitchfilm.com]


Micheangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro volte (Four Times) 2010

'Frammartino orchestrates a breathtaking one-take comic set piece in which a panic-stricken dog disrupts an Easter parade, which causes a small pickup truck to crash through the gates holding the goats, who proceed to storm the man’s house. This astonishing sequence, followed up by a clearly fictional death scene, indicates that Le Quattro volte will stray further from the documentary form .... Frammartino’s strategies are simple, and he introduces the grand death/rebirth, all-living-things-are-carbon-based theme via a single cut, from the man breathing his last to a goat kid emerging from the womb and falling to the ground, covered in fluid.' [Benjamin Mercer in reverseshot.com]

John Bankston's Fabulist Garden

'With a distinct aesthetic that recalls children's coloring books, the work of John Bankston ventures into a realm where fairy tales, science fiction, and contemporary issues of racism and sexuality coexit. Bankston tends to work in series that set forth contemporary fables addressing themes of masculine identity and transgression. ... his visual narratives, which lie somewhere between the Brothers Grimm and Tranny World -- a San Francisco cable television program that features transvestites -- describe a world where innocence is forever lost. ... characters disguise themselves in masquerade, blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction, human and animal characteristics, and masculinity and femininity.' [2002 SECA Art Award: John Bankston, Andrea Higgins, Chris Johnson, Will Rogan published by SFMOMA]

Nathalie Djurberg's "Snakes Know It's Yoga"

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4t-FQRRUo&feature=related

'Animals often pair up with humans in Nathalie Djurberg’s Claymation videos, so it wasn’t a surprise to see a blue snake bat yellow goo-goo eyes at a naked yogi in the Swedish-born artist’s latest work, “Snakes Know It’s Yoga” ... a storeroom full of animal bones was appropriate for an artist whose territory lies somewhere between the grotesques of Goya and the darker regions of Pee-wee’s Playhouse. / On the largest of four screens placed among display cases full of skulls, the adoring serpent catapulted the startled yogi into comical yoga poses, then tore at the man’s flesh, contorting his dismembered limbs into a distended figure out of a Salvador Dalí painting. / The video was pure Djurberg, whose twisted scenarios tend to begin with fairy-tale sweetness and dissolve into grisly sadism.' [Linda Yablonsky at www.nytimes.com]

Related:
Paul Chan's My Birds…trash… the future

Chris Jordan's albatross photos at SJMA

Image: www.chrisjordan.com

These photos are on view at San Jose Museum of Art -- just saw them a few days ago... 'The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking. To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, not a single piece of plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way (www.chrisjordan.com).' An article and video is at www.huffingtonpost.com, and Chris Jordan's TED talk is on youtube.

Related:
Institute of Critical Zoologists: It 'aims to develop a critical approach to the zoological gaze, or how humans view animals. ... Animals convey meaning and values that are culture-specific, and in viewing the animal, we cannot escape the cultural context, political climate and social values in which that observation takes place. ... We seek to develop a Critical Zoological Gaze that pursues creative, interdisciplinary research that includes perspectives typically ignored by animal studies, such as aesthetics; and to advance unconventional, even radical, means of understanding human and animal relations. The institute also discourages anthropomorphism in the appreciation and understanding of zoology.' [www.criticalzoologists.org]

David Attenborough's lyre bird video

Video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y&NR=1

Nina Katchadourian's Natural Car Alarms replaces the car alarm's typical six-tone siren with a similar one made only of bird calls. Well... Reality's stranger than fiction, as David Attenborough's video clip of the lyre bird's amazing vocal abilities will show. This video prompted one viewer to comment, "its pretty sad when the sound of the surrounding trees being cut down is now a mating call" (Nexarianz, <www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y&NR=1>). Photo from skola.amoskadan.cz

Mark Ryden's Incarnation

'White Wall: Your work juxtaposes sweet, fairy tale-like figures with disturbing images of things like meat grinders. What are you hoping to get at with that juxtaposition?

Mark Ryden: It is interesting how many people find images of meat so very disturbing yet they don't find it disturbing when they chow down a burger from McDonalds. In our culture there seems to be a complete disconnect between meat as food and the body of the animal that the meat comes from. I suppose it is this contradiction that brings me to repeatedly return to meat in my art. The oblivious consumption of meat without thought of the living, breathing creature it comes from is perplexing. It surprises many people to learn that I am actually not a vegetarian, I do eat meat. I myself don't think it is morally wrong to eat meat. What I do personally is to try to remain aware of what I am eating and where it came from. ...' [White Wall Magazine. 04.29.2010] Mark Ryden will be doing a book-signing at SFMOMA next week on 08.12.2010.

Related: Another non-vegetarian, Jonathan Horowitz's Go Vegan show at Gavin Brown.

Donald Weber's Dinner

Cute — I'm going to include bunnies in my Edible Pets Store. The tag-line for the store is: 'No need for pet-sitters when you go on vacation — just eat your pet and get a new one when you come back.'

Besides rabbits, the store carries pigs, parrot fishes, chicks, and turtles.

 
Chicks — eat them when they're no longer cute.


Parrot fish — the perfect pet. It looks friendly... and tasty.

Related: Food Inc. is one of my favorite movies.

Eduardo Kac's Edunia

[From www.ekac.org:] Edunia 'is a genetically-engineered hybrid of myself and Petunia. ... [M]y gene produces a protein in the veins only. The gene was isolated and sequenced from my blood. ... The result of this molecular manipulation is a bloom that creates the living image of human blood rushing through the veins of a flower.

The gene I selected is responsible for the identification of foreign bodies. In this work, it is precisely that which identifies and rejects the other that I integrate into the other, thus creating a new kind of self that is partially flower and partially human.' Hmmmm.... not sure about his intention to dismantle the defense of the other. (Thanks Meredith!)

Related:
Amy Youngs's Rearming the Spineless Opuntia: 'Through cloning and micropropagation technologies, humankind has engineered creations such as the Spineless Opuntia, a cactus that lacks its original defense mechanism against those who eat them.' This kinetic sculpture's armor closes up when approached and opens when people move away from it. [www.ylem.org/artists/ayoungs]

Video: www.ylem.org/artists/ayoungs

Robert Bresson's Au Hasard Balthazar

Video: artforum, youtube

'Everything I love and admire about Bresson is encapsulated by just one minute of one scene in this masterpiece [Au Hasard Balthazar (1966)]: The donkey Balthazar, pulling a hay cart through a circus menagerie, comes face-to-face with four animals in succession—a tiger, a polar bear, a chimpanzee, and an elephant. As Balthazar passes before each, the film cuts back and forth between his gaze and that of the other creature. Presumably, only a few feet separate them, but that distance is insurmountable. It’s a standard construction in film to use this technique when two human characters meet, revealing in the eyes of each something of their feelings and motivations. In Bresson’s film, however, these looks are exchanged by animals. He gives us their point of view, but no entry into their thoughts or feelings. ... The sequence is entirely inscrutable and can only leave us spellbound.' [Maragaret Honda, Artforum 03.2010]

'Placing a nonhuman protagonist at the center of Au hasard Balthazar instead of focusing on any of the constellation of human characters that enter the donkey’s orbit necessitated radical reconsideration of the place of editing in film language. He may be a donkey, but he’s our avatar through the film nonetheless. ... Bresson’s editing choices throughout push the limits of filmmaking as a universal language by legibly and plausibly rendering the inner life of an animal. (Robert Bresson most likely couldn’t communicate directly with donkeys during his lifetime, but Au hasard Balthazar might convince otherwise.) Of course, we’ll never know exactly what passed between Balthazar and the elephant, the other animals met upon his entry into the circus, ... but the film leaves a sense of something consciously felt between the donkey and all of those he encounters. ... Bresson performs yeoman’s work in making the unlikely possible: Balthazar remains one of cinema’s great tragic heroes.' [Jeff Reichert, ReverseShot]

Tiffany Bolzic's The Silent Dredge

Aquatic animals from the lowest depths to the highest levels of the ocean are being hauled up, while a new species rushes in.

Related:
Darwin's Nightmare (2004), a documentary film, deals with the environmental and social effects of the fishing industry around Lake Victoria in Tanzania. 'The Nile Perch was introduced into Lake Victoria and caused the extinction of hundreds of local species. ... Arms and munitions are often flown in on the same planes which transport the Nile perch fillets to European consumers, feeding the very conflicts which the aid was sent to remedy. ... The appalling living and working conditions of the indigenous people, in which basic sanitation is completely absent and many children turn to drugs and prostitution, is covered in great depth; because the Nile perch fish is farmed commercially, all the prime fillets are sold to European supermarkets, leaving the local people to survive on the ... fish carcasses [crawling with maggots]' (wikipedia entry, video on youtube).

Dale Carrico: Scratch a vegetarian, find a cyborg

Dale Carrico blogs about 'Animal Rites, Vegetarian Criticism, Brutal Theory' at amormundi.blogspot.com. On the nonhuman-human animal demarcation (from the last few paragraphs of Animal Rites):

'[E]ven practices and vocabularies of liberation, whenever they are mobilized and organized by the conventional claim that "we will no longer be treated as ‘mere’ animals!" necessarily simultaneously undermine as well as reanimate certain conspicuously asymmetrical relations of power. They do so by challenging their own location with respect to the human/nonhuman demarcation but otherwise fortifying it.

But surely, it cannot properly be the ambition of vegetarian criticism or activism to eliminate this [nonhuman-human animal] distinction altogether, however. Not even the most utopian advocates for animal rights expect ... that one day nonhuman animals will find their way to the voting booth, or urge the propriety of extending to nonhuman predatory animals, for example, human standards of fairplay or penalties of law. And though I am sensitive to the ways in which observations of this kind are typically used to dismiss or trivialize the very idea of vegetarian sensitivity and practice this seems to me no good reason to refuse to register their significance and force altogether. ...

What is wanted instead is a reconceptualization of the political in which both human and nonhuman animals count as actors and potential peers. This reconceptualization would be facilitated I think by the insistence that the relation of a human being to his ham sandwich or to her leather jacket is always already a relation between animals, always already a political relation between potential peers, and not a prepolitical, instrumental relation of human beings to the realization of their wants. ...

For me, vegetarian criticism must actually take as its point of departure the inevitability of human/nonhuman animal demarcations, an inevitability that is continuous with the concomitant inevitability of ongoing demarcations among animals, human and nonhuman. And this vegetarian criticism should take, then, as its tasks, both the perpetual troubling of these demarcations and the documentation of their transformations and effects. This would seem to me to be a critical practice that comports well with a sense of the political that has as its constitutive anxiety the simultaneous recognition of the necessity and the impossibility of eliminating violence altogether from public life, a sense of the political which provokes a seriousness the strictures of which afford not purity, but, it is to be hoped, among other things, perhaps a real measure of pleasure.'

Eugene Thacker at ATC 04.26.2010

'Eugene Thacker is a writer and theorist whose works examine the philosophical aspects of science and technology. His most recent book is entitled 'After Life' and will be published by the University of Chicago Press. He is also the author of the books 'The Exploit: A Theory of Networks' (co-authored with Alexander Galloway), 'The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture,' and 'Biomedia.' Thacker is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication & Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.' [atc.berkeley.edu]

Some links/books related to art and genetics:
Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology & the Discourse of the Posthuman, Eugene Thacker. From Cultural Critique 53 (2003).
"Body Invasion & Resistant Cultural Practice", Critical Art Ensemble. From Art Journal 59:3.
Critical Art Ensemble <www.critical-art.net>
FutureNatural, ed. George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam (1996).
Gene(sis) art show <www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/genesis>
Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond by Eduardo Kac. Leonardo Books
Eduardo Kac <www.ekac.org>
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience by Beatriz da Costa (Editor), Kavita Philip (Editor). Leonardo Books
The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future
Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots by Eduardo Kac
Life Extreme: An Illustrated Guide to the New Life by Eduardo Kac & Avital Ronell
The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age by Suzanne Anker, Dorothy Nelkin
Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art by Ingeborg Reichle, Gloria Custance, and Robert Zwijnenberg
Art Journal, Spring 1996, Vol. 55, No. 1: "Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code" by College Art Association (Jan 1, 1996)
"Manipulating genetic identities: the creation of chimeras, cyborgs and (cyber-)golems." from Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine by Ernestine Daubner (Digital - Jul 29, 2005) - HTML
Paradise Now: Picturing The Genetic Revolution by Marvin Heiferman, Carole Kismaric, and Ian Berry (2001)

Links to class readings:
Dale Carrico's Technoscience critical theory class.
Alenda Chang's Representing Nature: Ecocritical Approaches rhetoric class at Berkeley (reader available at Replica Copy). In case you're suffering from theory withdrawal, you can sit in lecture classes at Berkeley.

Chloe Piene's Blackmouth

Video documentation: www.lumeneclipse.com/gallery/23/piene/index.html

In this mesmerizing video installation, Blackmouth's larger-than-life-size (~2x) confronts the viewer, its audio slowed and distorted into deep non-human animalistic howls, a hybrid non-human/human animal.

Eugenio Merino's 4 The Love of Go(l)d, Berlinde De Bruyckere's Marthe

On the topic of interspecies art, how can one forget Damien Hirst who uses animals as art materials in his factory. Eugenio Merino's 4 The Love of Go(l)d is a giant sculpture displayed in the type of glass case that Hirst likes to fill with formaldehyde and dead animals, of a Hirst figure pointing a gun at himself and blowing his own brains out. This piece is a response to Hirst's For the Love of God, which is derivative of the crystal-covered skull of his friend John LeKay and whom Hirst did not credit. The asking price of For the Love of God is £50,000,000 ($100 million or 75 million euros). "I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself," said Eugenio Merino. "Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically..." [UK Guardian:
'Suicide' sculpture of Damien Hirst causes controversy in Spain'] Massimo Deganutti did a version of this with Damien Hirst in formaldehyde.

Related: The Great Contemporary Art Bubble movie

Berlinde De Bruyckere's Marthe (below) would make Francis Bacon proud and Damien Hirst envious. Another of her piece is at New Museum's After Nature show.

(Aziz+Cucher)'s Rick

Daniel Lee's Manimals, Tara Tucker

Image: Year of the Ox (1993)


Image: Year of the Cock (1993)

Related:
Future co-evolution... Tara Tucker's hybrid animals can make their own food.

Eugene Thacker at ATC on 04.26.2010

'Eugene Thacker is a writer and theorist whose works examine the philosophical aspects of science and technology. His most recent book is entitled 'After Life' and will be published by the University of Chicago Press. He is also the author of the books 'The Exploit: A Theory of Networks' (co-authored with Alexander Galloway), 'The Global Genome: Biotechnology, Politics, and Culture,' and 'Biomedia.' Thacker is Associate Professor in the School of Literature, Communication & Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology.' [atc.berkeley.edu]

Some links/books related to art and genetics:
Data Made Flesh: Biotechnology & the Discourse of the Posthuman, Eugene Thacker. From Cultural Critique 53 (2003).
"Body Invasion & Resistant Cultural Practice", Critical Art Ensemble. From Art Journal 59:3.
Critical Art Ensemble <www.critical-art.net>
FutureNatural, ed. George Robertson, Melinda Mash, Lisa Tickner, Jon Bird, Barry Curtis, and Tim Putnam (1996).
Gene(sis) art show <www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/genesis>
Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond by Eduardo Kac. Leonardo Books
Eduardo Kac <www.ekac.org>
Tactical Biopolitics: Art, Activism, and Technoscience by Beatriz da Costa (Editor), Kavita Philip (Editor). Leonardo Books
The Prosthetic Impulse: From a Posthuman Present to a Biocultural Future
Telepresence and Bio Art: Networking Humans, Rabbits and Robots by Eduardo Kac
Life Extreme: An Illustrated Guide to the New Life by Eduardo Kac & Avital Ronell
The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age by Suzanne Anker, Dorothy Nelkin
Art in the Age of Technoscience: Genetic Engineering, Robotics, and Artificial Life in Contemporary Art by Ingeborg Reichle, Gloria Custance, and Robert Zwijnenberg
Art Journal, Spring 1996, Vol. 55, No. 1: "Contemporary Art and the Genetic Code" by College Art Association (Jan 1, 1996)
"Manipulating genetic identities: the creation of chimeras, cyborgs and (cyber-)golems." from Parachute: Contemporary Art Magazine by Ernestine Daubner (Digital - Jul 29, 2005) - HTML
Paradise Now: Picturing The Genetic Revolution by Marvin Heiferman, Carole Kismaric, and Ian Berry (2001)
Perfecting Mankind: Eugenics and Photography
Foreign Body: Photography and the Prelude to Genetic Modification

Links to class readings:
Dale Carrico's Technoscience critical theory class.
Alenda Chang's Representing Nature: Ecocritical Approaches rhetoric class at Berkeley (reader available at Replica Copy). In case you're suffering from theory withdrawal, you can sit in lecture classes at Berkeley.
Joan Slonczewski's Biology in Science Fiction

Octavia E. Butler's Xenogenesis trilogy

I love this book. Octavia E. Butler is my new favorite fiction writer. (Read excerpts on amazon, wikipedia entry...) A question posed by Xenogenesis trilogy (now titled Lilith's Brood) is: Would you give up physical aspects of what you identify as being human if it makes you stronger (healthier), more intelligent (e.g. less violent as a society), and better-looking (I'm throwing this last factor in because it is the main reason for Lilith not wanting to trade genes with the non-human species).

In the novel, a non-human species has arrived on earth, after humans have almost destroyed themselves and the Earth, to rescue humans and trade genes. This species has a third gender, the ooloi, who have the ability to manipulate genetics, and are biological traders, driven to share genes with other intelligent species, changing both parties: "We do what you would call genetic engineering. We know you had begun to do it yourselves a little, but it's foreign to you. We do it naturally. We must do it. It renews us, enables us to survive as an evolving species instead of specializing ourselves into extinction or stagnation. ... It is part of our reproduction, but it's much more deliberate than what any mated pair of humans have managed so far. ... We acquire new life--seek it, investigate it, manipulate it, sort it, use it. We carry the drive to do this in a minuscule cell within a cell, a tiny organelle within every cell of our bodies. ... Because of that organelle, the ooloi can perceive DNA and manipulate it precisely." (Chapter 4, Book 1—Dawn)

Related:

Bdelloid rotifers reproduce asexually, with genetic variation introduced by scavenging DNA.
The New Mexico whiptail lizard is an all-female species whose offspring gets genetic duplicates of its mother but is not a clone (parthenogenesis reproduction), its genetic information conserved by gene duplication.
Fantastic Planet (animated film)

Critical Art Ensemble's Cult of the New Eve

Cult of the New Eve appropriates 'Christian promissory rhetoric' for 'the promises of miracle cures, abundance and immortality by industry and scientific specialists to persuade the public of the utopian nature of new biotechnology', and also moved this rhetoric from the context of the Church to the context of the cult.

Related:
The Gentle Seduction by Marc Stiegler (a techno-utopian transhumanist short story)